"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the
animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel
nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest
lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams, (1722-1803)

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Offering a frank assessment of how his fellow Republicans approach
the issue of poverty, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) sounded a bit more like
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) than a guy who stumped for Mitt Romney.

“I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor,” Kasich told the New York Times in a story published Tuesday. “That if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”“You know what?” he added. “The very people who complain ought to ask their grandparents if they worked at the W.P.A.”Although he opposes the Affordable Care Act, Kasich broke with many Republican governors when he accepted the Medicaid expansion under the law. Despite the efforts by some GOP lawmakers to block the expansion, Kasich unilaterally secured the federal funds
— which will be used to provide coverage to up to 275,000 low income
Ohioans — through a manuever that could face conservative legal
challenges.

A Republican Nevada state assemblyman said that he would vote for
legislation in favor of slavery if his constituents wanted him to.
According to the Las Vegas Sun, Jim Wheeler of Gardnerville, NV was
speaking to the Storey County Republican Party when he made the remarks
last August, although they are only now coming to light. “If that’s what they wanted, I’d have to hold my nose, I’d have to
bite my tongue and they’d probably have to hold a gun to my head, but
yeah, if that’s what the citizens of the, if that’s what the
constituency wants that elected me, that’s what they elected me for,” he
said. “That’s what a republic is about.”Now, Wheeler said to the Sun, “liberal operatives” are spreading the video in an effort to smear him.The
assemblyman was referring to a blog post by a conservative commentator
named Chuck Muth, who asked during Wheeler’s candidacy, “(W)hat if those
citizens decided they want to, say, bring back slavery? Hey, if that’s
what the citizens want, right Jim?” Wheeler told the audience of Republicans, “yeah I would.”The remarks have kicked off a firestorm with Republicans and
Democrats alike rushing to denounce Wheeler, who rode the 2010 wave of
tea party fervor into his spot on the state assembly.The Associated Press quoted
a statement by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval that said, in part,
“Assemblyman Wheeler’s comments are deeply offensive and have no place
in our society. He should retract his remarks and apologize.”........................

Thursday, October 24, 2013

According to the BLS household survey, part-time jobs fell 594,000 in September while full-time workers were up 691,000.This was one hopeful nugget in an otherwise lackluster jobs report. Workers are considered to be "part time" if they work under 35 hours a week.Earlier this summer, when part-time numbers looked like they might be on the rise, some speculated that the shift was due to the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act.Under Obamacare, employers will be required to offer health insurance
or face penalties (the White House recently announced it will delay
enforcement until 2015). Some companies have said they will reduce their
full-time staff to below the 50-employee threshold as a result, or
simply shave back full-timers' hours."If the health law were driving employers to cut employees’ hours,
the most vulnerable workers would likely be those working just above the
30-hour cutoff," writes the Wall Street Journal's Ben Casselman.
"That means the data would show a decline in those working 30 to 34
hours and an increase in those working less than 30 hours." He explains: That isn’t what’s happening. The share of part-timers who say they
usually work between 30 and 34 hours at their main job has been roughly
flat over the past three years, at about 28%. (September data aren’t yet
available.) If anything, it’s actually risen in the past year, though
the change has been minor. The share working just under 30 hours has
indeed risen somewhat, but the share working under 25 hours has
fallen—suggesting that employers are giving part-timers more hours,
rather than cutting full-timers’ hours back.

Put another way: If the Labor
Department used the same definition of “part-time” as the health law,
its data would show no increase in part-time work over the past year.......................

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Less than a month after engineering a deeply unpopular government
shutdown in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to derail the Affordable
Care Act, Republicans are already trying to shift the blame.Variousright-wingmediaoutlets
are picking up the claim that President Barack Obama deliberately lured
Republicans into a trap planned by his senior advisor Valerie Jarrett.The claim originates with author Ed Klein, who wrote a provocative and widely criticized biography of Obama called The Amateur, in addition to The Truth About Hillary, a similarly received book on the Clintons.“(Jarrett)
convinced the president that a government shutdown and default offered a
great opportunity to demonize the Republicans and help the Democrats
win back a majority in the House of Representatives in 2014,” Klein told
The New York Post.Klein said Jarrett told the president that voters would blame
Republicans for the shutdown and “devised the no-negotiating strategy”
that ultimately forced the GOP to end the 16-day shutdown with Obamacare
still intact and to extend the federal government’s borrowing power to
avert debt default.“Valerie also came with the idea of using the words ‘hostage’, and
‘ransom’ and ‘terrorists’ against the Republicans,” Klein said.Those tactics, along with Republican antics before and after the shutdown began Oct. 1, drove the GOP’s favorability ratings to record lows for any political party.Recent polls suggest voters overwhelmingly blame Republicans
for the shutdown and disapprove of the GOP’s handling of negotiations
over the federal budget — and they’re not wrong in assessing blame.The plan to tie funding for the president’s signature health care law
to a resolution to fund the federal government had been hatched by conservative lawmakers,activists and business leadersover a period of months.And
Republican threats to shut down the government dominated congressional
coverage for weeks prior to the start of a new fiscal year on Oct. 1.But enforcement of one aspect of the partial shutdown proved to
conservatives the shutdown had been planned in advance – by the
president.“They already had barricades, cones, from New York to California,
Utah, Arizona, South Dakota – they had worked out in advance that they
were closing these things down,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) during a
Wednesday afternoon Fox News interview.He was referring to the closure of national parks and other landmarks
after about 800,000 federal employees were furloughed, and which became
a cause célèbre among conservatives.“Somebody in the Senate had to have given them the heads up, we’re
not going to take up anything, and that’s the only thing that explains
why they would turn down our initial proposal and then compromises,
including one that was just capitulation that night before the shutdown
started,” Gohmert said.Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made clear before the shutdown that
Senate Democrats would not pass any funding resolution approved by
House Republicans that defunded or delayed Obamacare.Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) also blamed
the president for Republican tactics, accusing Obama of taking the
nation to the brink of default to advance his political agenda.“Republicans were the adults in the room, offering compromise after
compromise and urging the President to come to the table and do what’s
right for our country,” Bachmann said Thursday in a Facebook post.Even if the government shutdown was a trap set by the president and
one of his closest advisors, some Republican lawmakers seem eager to step into it again.Rep. John C. Fleming (R-LA) voted against the House measure that
reopened the government until Jan. 7 and raised the debt ceiling until
Jan. 7, and he said he’s already looking forward to the next shutdown.“That will get us into Round 2,” Fleming told The New York Times. “See, we’re going to start this all over again.”

After years of trying to undermine the Affordable Care Act, Texas
lawmakers are suddenly embracing President Obama’s signature domestic
policy accomplishment. On Thursday, the Texas Tribune reported
that the state is shuttering a state-based health care program and
encouraging Texans to sign-up for coverage in the federally-run health
care exchange.Texas’ high risk pool program,
which opened in 1998, provides coverage to individuals and families
with pre-existing conditions who couldn’t find insurance in the
individual health care market. But since the ACA’s exchanges began
enrolling beneficiaries, the state deemed the program obsolete, arguing
that Texans could find a better deal in the federally-run exchange:

The state has deemed the high-risk pool obsolete,
as the Affordable Care Act prohibits insurance companies participating
in the federal marketplace, which launched on Oct. 1, from denying
coverage to Texans with pre-existing conditions. Gov. Rick Perry signed Senate Bill 1367 in June, scheduling the pool’s abolishment.The pool will close Jan. 1, and the 23,000 people currently
participating in the pool must sign up for coverage on the insurance
exchange by Dec. 15 or find coverage elsewhere to avoid a lapse in care.

The shift may help beneficiaries — state health experts project that
“people are going to have many more options and many better options in
the marketplace ” — but it undermines Gov. Rick Perry’s (R-TX) entire
health care philosophy and contradicts the GOP’s claim that states are
best suited to take care of their uninsured populations. Throughout the 2012 presidential campaign, for instance, Perry
supported complete repeal of the Affordable Care Act and suggested that
states should take the lead in crafting health care policy. “If we can
get the federal government out of our business in the states when it
comes to health care, we’ll come up with ways to deliver more health
care to more people cheaper than what the federal government is
mandating today,” Perry said during a 2011 GOP primary debate. Two years
later, he appears to have changed his mind.

ROSS, N.D. — While three generations of the Sorenson family have made
their livelihood growing wheat and other crops here, they also have
learned to embrace the furious pace of North Dakota’s oil exploration.
After all, oil money helped the Sorensons acquire the land and continue
to farm it.

But more oil means more drilling, resulting in tons of waste that is
putting cropland at risk and raising doubt among farmers that these two
cash crops can continue to coexist.

A private company is trying to install a landfill to dispose of solid
drilling waste on a golden 160-acre wheat field across the road from
Mike and Kim Sorenson’s farmhouse. Although the engineers and regulators
behind the project insist that it is safe for the environment, the
Sorensons have voiced concern that salt from the drilling waste could
seep onto their land, which would render the soil infertile and could
contaminate their water, causing their property value to drop.

“I’m concerned not if it leaks, it’s when it’s going to leak over there,” Ms. Sorenson, 42, said.

Oil companies in North Dakota disposed of more than a million tons of
drilling waste last year, 15 times the amount in 2006, according to
Steven J. Tillotson, the assistant director of the Division of Waste
Management for the state’s Health Department. Seven drilling waste
landfills operate in the state, with 16 more under construction or
seeking state approval.

Landowners who lease their acreage see a reward, while neighboring
farmers often protest the potential harm to their pastures. Farmers here
complain that state officials promote policies that help the energy
sector grow rapidly with little regard for the effect on their
livelihoods.

His 36-year-old brother, Charlie, who farms with him, added, “There’s
just more effort put on where the bacon’s coming from, I guess.”

Few would argue against the benefits of the energy industry, which has
made North Dakota the second-largest oil producing state in the country
and helped it build a surplus of more than $1.6 billion.

“I wouldn’t say that production agriculture is being forgotten because
everyone understands that it always has been and always will be the
backbone of the economy of North Dakota,” said Dave Hynek, one of five
commissioners in Mountrail County, where the landfill is being proposed.
“However, the tremendous amount of money coming into the state coffers
from the oil industry at the present time has overshadowed that.”

Without the oil industry, Mr. Sorenson said, he might not even be farming.

His grandfather worked in the oil fields in Montana in the 1940s to earn
the money to buy the land where Mr. Sorenson and his family live. In
the late 1990s, Mr. Sorenson worked in the North Dakota oil fields for
five years to make enough money to farm full time.

“I’ve worked in the oil industry,” Mr. Sorenson said. “That’s kind of how I got all my stuff.”

The Sorensons receive royalties from oil that is produced on their land
and from allowing drilling, which accounts for about 10 percent of their
income, Mr. Sorenson said.

“I’m fairly neutral on the drilling,” he said, though that did not
lessen his concern over the possibility of a landfill across the street.
“This most certainly affects me negatively.”

Ms. Sorenson said she was more worried about the environmental risk of
living next to a landfill, like runoff seeping into their well water,
and what that could mean for their five children.

“We’d love to see our grandkids and further generations be able to be a part of this land, also,” Ms. Sorenson said.

The Sorensons, who have hired a lawyer, are especially sensitive to the
landfill proposal because the property owner offering to lease the land
for the project is a second cousin of Mike and Charlie Sorenson. The
cousin, Roger Sorenson, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Most drilling waste, usually chunks of earth slathered in chemicals and
petroleum, is disposed of at the drilling site. About a year and a half
ago, the state passed a regulation requiring drilling companies to dry
the waste before burying it on-site to address concerns about runoff and
leakage. More companies have since turned to landfills to dispose of
waste.

Industry experts argue that landfills are built with better technology
and safeguards to prevent environmental hazards than dumps at drilling
sites. And it is safer to have a few central dumps that are monitored
than a waste pit on each of the thousands of drilling sites throughout
the Bakken shale field, said John McCain, the executive vice president
and principal engineer at Carlson McCain, the engineering company
designing the landfill proposed in Ross.

“I think that landfills carry a negative connotation with them,” Mr.
McCain said. “But that negative connotation comes from the old dumps,
and the public hasn’t really been educated on new landfill technology.”

Mr. McCain argued that the environmental concern over the proposed waste
site in Ross is unwarranted because the soil and liners would protect
against leakage.

Those assurances ring hollow to environmental activists in the state,
who say they have seen too many drilling-related spills, though not
necessarily from landfills.

“We’re not in any way, shape or form against oil,” said Don Morrison,
the executive director of the Dakota Resource Council, an environmental
group. Later, he added, “The pace of development is the problem and the
fact that there are laws on the books that are not being implemented to
protect people’s water and land and livelihoods.”

Over the past five years, Mr. Tillotson said, contamination from
landfills has occurred only twice, and the companies responsible were
fined.

“Environmental releases, whether they are on a well site or off-site, or
even at a landfill we regulate, is an issue that we take extremely
seriously,” Mr. Tillotson said in an e-mail.

For the landfill near the Sorensons to be built, the Mountrail County
Commission must rezone the land from agricultural to industrial.

Mr. Hynek said he was unsure whether he would support the landfill. He
understood the environmental concerns, he said, but added that those
needed to be balanced against the likelihood of a problem and the
benefit of oil exploration.

Mr. Hynek, who farms for a living, said he shared one major concern with
his neighbors: the increasing conversion of farmland into drilling
land.

“This country has always been ag country as far as raising crops and
livestock,” he said. “And once this mineral is depleted — and it will be
some day — it will go back to being ag land, and I don’t believe it
will ever be as productive as it originally was.”

On Wednesday night’s edition of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel
Maddow highlighted the end of the shutdown saga that Republicans
instigated two weeks ago and noted that for all the fuss and bother and
all the histrionics on the part of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-UT) and others, the
Republicans got nothing in the final deal. President Barack Obama and
the Democrats held fast in the face of the hostage-taking tactics and in
the end, they prevailed. “We’ve got to get out of the habit of governing by crisis,” Obama
said in his remarks Wednesday night. “My hope and expectation is that
everybody has learned that there’s no reason we can’t work on the issues
at hand.”Maddow followed the president’s remarks by recounting the saga that
landed the nation here, the plan by House Republicans to shut down the
government if Democrats and Pres. Obama did not do the impossible and
repeal the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare.“This
was their brilliant plan! They thought this would work!” Maddow said.
“The Democrats would never let the government shut down.”As for the Republicans, she said, “Once they had an actual shutdown
on their hands, they did not have a plan for what to do next.”The GOP caucus threw out a spray of demands, ranging from defunding
and delaying parts of Obamacare to birth control to the Keystone XL
pipeline, all of which the Democrats rejected as Republicans sank lower
and lower in public opinion.All of the demands on their “long, weird, ever-changing ransom note,”
Maddow said, were rejected, but the Democrats did allow them to say
that they were insisting on income verifications for some ACA
applicants, a provision that was already in the Act.“We know tonight,” said Maddow, “that of their entire list, they’re going to get nothing. Nothing.”“You can argue for what you want through the legislative process,”
she said, while rolling footage of a beleaguered and sweaty-looking Rep.
John Boehner (R-OH), “by trying to make legislation, amend bills, do
great in debates, win votes” and win elections.“But
when you lose policy fights, and you lose elections,” she concluded,
“the line was drawn here tonight to say, ‘You know what, there is not a
third way. There is not another means of policy-making available to you
in Washington that involves you destroying things unless you get your
way.” And if you try to do it that way, she said, “you will get exactly nothing. Nothing!”............................

The host of Fox & Friends on Thursday hinted that a stenographer who interrupted a House vote
on reopening the government by yelling about God and “Freemasons” was
the victim of religious discrimination and she simply “saw something
that didn’t seem right.”During a Wednesday night vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to
reopen the federal government after being shut down for more than 16
days, Dianne Reidy was forcibly escorted away from the Speaker’s podium
after screaming that the “greatest deception here is this is not one
nation under God, it never was.”“The Constitution would not have been written by Freemasons, they go against God,” she said. But
on Thursday, Fox News host Steve Doocy selected an email from a viewer —
who claimed to be a minister — to explain Reidy’s actions.“It was not a mental episode, what she was doing was known as an
exercise of the gifts of the spirit where she brought a warning and a
message from God regarding the activity,” Doocy said the minister had
written. A second email complained: “Amazingly, this religious and obviously
sweet lady gets fed up and speaks her mind, something we all have tried
to do. She brings up our dear Lord and she gets a mental evaluation? I
think it should be the other way around.”Doocy noted that the email went on to suggest a list of other people who were more deserving of a mental evaluation.Co-host Brian Kilmeade, however, was the voice of reason, saying,
“She got by the Speaker’s chair and started screaming in the middle of a
vote. You do have pull her away.”“Well, sure,” co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck replied. “We’ve had
incidents in the past which certainly require some security measures to
be taken and we’re thankful for those.”“But
who knows, maybe she just saw something that didn’t seem right and
mounting frustration and tensions brought it out of her.”.......................

As Congress looked to end the budget and debt crises – at least for
now — a Republican congressman offered an ominous outlook on Wednesday.Pledging to vote against the plan
to re-open the government until Jan. 15 and raise the debt ceiling
until at least Feb. 7, Rep. John C. Fleming (R-LA) indicated that he's
already looking toward the next showdown.

“I’ll vote against it,” Fleming said, as quoted by the New York Times. “But that will get us into Round 2. See, we’re going to start this all over again.”Fleming was one of 144 House members — all Republicans — who voted
against the deal that passed both houses of Congress on Wednesday. On
Tuesday, he told reporters that Republicans wanted to use the looming debt limit deadline as leverage.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) conceded on Wednesday that he would not hold up a
vote on an emerging Senate deal to re-open the federal government and
avert federal default, but admitted that the three-week long budget
standoff — which began with his 21-hour speech on the Senate floor — was
nothing more than an effort to build up his fundraising list. “My focus is, I think, where the American people’s focus is, which is
what are we doing to provide real relief to the people who are hurting
because of Obamacare and today,” Cruz told reporters after meeting with
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), before reiterating his
commitment to repealing the health care law.Asked what he has gained from holding-up a deal for weeks, Cruz pointed to a political petition he has been promoting for days:

CRUZ: We have seen a remarkable thing happen. Months ago when the effort
to defund Obamacare began, official Washington scoffed. They scoffed
that the American people would rise up. They scoffed that the House of
Representatives would do anything and they scoffed that the Senate would
do anything. We saw first of all, millions of millions of
American people rising up across this country, over two million people
signing a national petition to defund Obamacare. We saw the
House of Representatives take a courageous stand listening to the
American people that everyone in official Washington said wouldn’t
happen

But while more than two million people
added their names to a website run by The Senate Conservative Fund — a
political PAC that supports Cruz– urging Congress defund the Affordable
Care Act, popular support for the health care law has actually increased
since the shutdown began on Sep. 30. The Gallup poll reported on
Tuesday that “half of Americans today want the Affordable Care Act
repealed or scaled back, down from 57 percent in January 2011.” In three week period following Cruz’s speech — even as GOP’s
national approval ratings plummeted — conservatives frantically built
their fundraising lists and campaign coffers. In the last quarter,
Cruz’s political action committee raised in $797,000,
nearly twice what it pulled in the quarter prior, and Heritage Action —
which has pressured conservatives to vote against any bill that does
not undermine Obamcare — collected $330,000. Unfortunately, the rest of the country hasn’t fared nearly as well.
Economists predict that the country lost thousands of jobs, billions in
economic output, diminished consumer confidence, and the prospect of a
lower credit rating.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Adding
his voice to the eleventh-hour debate about the government shutdown,
Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) today proposed reopening just enough of
the government to hold new hearings on Benghazi.“Across this
great nation of ours, people are suffering,” he told Fox News’s Megyn
Kelly. “Suffering, Megyn, because they still don’t know what really
happened in Benghazi.”Noting that the government shutdown had
furloughed investigators who could be looking into Benghazi, he said,
“If there’s something in our government more worthy of funding than
that, I can’t think of it.”Senator Paul said he knew that he would draw the ire of fellow
Republicans by suggesting that the government be partially reopened, but
added, “Sometimes, you have to put politics aside when there is
something more important at stake, and I think any reasonable person
would agree that there is nothing more important than getting to the
bottom of Benghazi.”“For the two weeks of this shutdown, the American people have had no
new information about Benghazi,” he said. “It’s time to stop the
madness.”

Monday, October 14, 2013

Neverending punchline and holder of the Bump-it Industries
Constitutional Law Chair at Mat-Su GED’s-r-Us University takes time out
from palling around with Canadian terrorists to explain to America that that there Obammer fella is cruisin’ for an impeachable bruisin’ if he doesn’t pay America’s bills the way the Founding Fathers and Jesus would want him to:(Note: this is also a drinking game. Every time Palin writes the
word “debt”: drink a Bartles & Jaymes. But if you wake up tomorrow
and find yourself to be a knocked-up-teenager, it’s your own damn fault. Whore.)I’m sorry. Where were we? Oh yes, Prof. Dr. Palin, please proceed:

Apparently the president thinks he can furlough reality when talking about the debt limit. To suggest that raising the debt limit doesn’t incur more debt is laughably absurd. The very reason why you raise the debt limit is so that you can incur more debt. Otherwise what’s the point?It’s also shameful to see him scaremongering the markets with his
talk of default. There is no way we can default if we follow the
Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 4, requires that we
service our debt first. We currently collect more than enough tax revenue to service our debt
if we do that first. However, we don’t have enough money to continue to
finance our ever-growing federal government (with our $17 trillion
dollar national debt that has increased over 50% since Obama took office). That’s why President Obama wants to increase the debt limit. He doesn’t want to make the tough decisions to rein in government spending.

Also, too: Social Security.

So, he’s scaremongering the markets about default, just
as he tries to scaremonger our senior citizens about their Social
Security, which, by the way, is funded by the Social Security Trust Fund
and is solvent through 2038.

And how, you may very well ask, can this apparently shiftless
layabout President get in there and fix this g-d-damned thing? I refer
you to an excerpt from the Federalist Papers that is often printed on a Denny’s coloring place-mat:

Sarah Palin burst onto the national scene out of nowhere a
couple months ago when she became the Republican vice presidential
nominee, but the Alaska governor seems to still not fully understand the
details of the job she is applying for.In an interview with a local Colorado TV station,
Palin said the vice president is “in charge of the United States
Senate” and “can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of
good policy changes.”Palin’s statement seems to betray a fundamental understanding about
the nature of the vice president’s job. As regards the Senate, the vice
president’s official role is to serve as presiding officer, although
those duties are traditionally handled by the president pro temproe.
Only in the event of a tie can the vice president cast a vote…

Well, sure. The Vice President can’t do that, but the President can
because he’s, like, the boss and stuff and also one louder, and you
would already know this if you had read the Constitution and the Bill of
Rights and the Federalist Papers.That’s right. All of them, Katie…

Thursday, October 10, 2013

WASHINGTON—Noting that the individuals in question may be extremely
mentally disturbed or suffering from a serious psychological illness,
the nation’s psychiatrists announced Wednesday that they are deeply
concerned for the estimated 5 percent of Americans who were found in
nationwide polls this week to approve of the U.S. Congress. “With
numerous members of Congress refusing to negotiate an end to the
shutdown in the face of widespread federal furloughs and a looming
deadline to avoid defaulting on government debt, we are extremely
concerned for the mental health of those Americans who responded, ‘Yes,
we think Congress is doing a good job,’” psychiatrist Dr. Donald Levin
said in a press conference this morning, telling reporters that the
estimated 15.5 million Americans who approve of Congress are likely
“very troubled” citizens who may in fact be experiencing psychotic
episodes or delusional thoughts. “We’re not entirely sure who these
people are or where they come from—perhaps they are psych ward patients,
or unstable recluses living in remote huts on the outskirts of
society—but what we do know is that they are extremely disconnected from
reality and in need of immediate attention if they are not already
receiving it. We need to find these people and get them the help they
need before their illnesses get worse.” Psychiatrists added that because
a number of mental health services are currently furloughed, many
respondents would just have to “sit tight and hang in there” until the
shutdown is resolved.

Just 24 percent of Americans have a positive opinion of the Republican party, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday.The survey reflects a record low in approval for the GOP for NBC/WSJ poll, which dates back to 1989.

The poll
also found an increase in support for the Affordable Care Act with 38
percent of respondents approving of the law -- up from 31 percent in the
same poll last month.The GOP took a big hit over the shutdown. Americans blame Republicans
over Obama for the shutdown by a 53-31 margin. Seventy percent said
that Republicans were placing politics ahead of the country's best
interest. Fifty-one percent said that Obama is putting his agenda above
the country.A Gallup poll released Wednesday found that 28 percent of Americans view Republicans favorably, also an all-time low for that poll.The NBC/WSJ poll surveyed 800 people Oct. 7-9 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percent.

WASHINGTON — The reality is now stranger than fiction.President Obama
on Tuesday gave us an Economics 101 primer by dumbing down the
consequences of America not paying its bills. He did it because he must.
“Imagine in your private life, if you decided that I’m not going to pay
my mortgage for a month or two,” he said. “You’re not saving money by
not paying your mortgage. You’re a deadbeat.”
But Obama faces Republicans who think he, Wall Street, most economists
and even China are crying wolf about not jacking up the nation’s
borrowing limit by the Oct. 17 deadline.

It comes as 800,000 fuming federal workers are furloughed. Families of
soldiers killed in Afghanistan are denied death benefits. World War II
vets can’t get to the World War II Memorial. Little kids with cancer are
denied treatment.
And you wonder why voter turnout keeps heading south? Or why approval ratings of Congress are worse than those of HMOs?
But at least we get some paltry benefit from HMOs. Imagine you’re the
family of a fallen soldier just told you’re denied death benefits while
the legislative circus plays out.
Nothing so simply crystallizes the complex absurdity than this
atrocity: Families of five dead soldiers screwed out of what’s owed
them.
While Congress fiddles, and each party plots its next photo op, the
families burn with frustration, and the nation grows more disgusted.
As I sat 20 feet away from Obama in the White House briefing room, I
saw a man straining to communicate the obvious over and over — and
frustrated that he was so far falling short.
He can’t be surprised. An aggressively rational Harvard Law graduate
confronts an enemy that dismisses compromise and is often not moved by
facts, science and logic.
Hold on tight for the rest of this bumpy ride.

Wednesday, October 09, 2013

Head Start programs have been shuttered, small businesses can’t get loans
and hundreds of thousands of federal government employees are
furloughed. But the exclusive gyms available only to members of Congress
have remained open throughout the shutdown.A House aide confirmed to ThinkProgress that the House member’s gym is open. The House gym features a swimming pool, basketball courts, paddleball courts, a sauna, a steam room and flat screen TVs.
While towel service is unavailable, taxpayers remain on the hook for
cleaning and maintenance, which has been performed daily throughout the
shutdown. There are also costs associated with the power required to heat the pools and keep the lights on. According to the aide, the decision to keep the gym open — even while
other critical government services were shelved — while made by the
Architect of the Capitol, but was done with the direct involvement
Speaker Boehner’s office. Meanwhile, the staff gym available to
Congressional staff has been closed. It appears that the members gym in the Senate remains open on similar
terms. Yesterday, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) complained to a reporter
from the Omaha World-Herald that the members gym was getting “rank.” The daily operating cost of the House and Senate gyms remains shrouded in secrecy. The Architect of the Capitol, which oversees both gyms, has previously refused to provide information about the gyms for “security reasons.” A call to the Architect of the Captol for this story was not immediately returned. Dozens of House members — including many members of the Tea Party who
pushed the government into shutdown over demands to defund Obamacare —
live in their offices to save money and use the House gym to shower.

Update

An
initial version of this piece incorrectly reported that the decision to
keep the gym open was made by Speaker’s Boehner’s office. Actually, the
decision was made by the Architect of the Capital. According to a House
aide, the decision of the Architect of the Capitol was done with the
direct involvement of Speaker Boehner’s office, however. In a phone
call, a spokesman for Speaker Boehner, Michael Steel, would not answer
direct questions about whether Speaker Boehner’s office recommended the
decision or had any communications with the Architect of the Capitol on
the matter.

A new poll indicates more Americans blame Republicans for the partial
government shutdown than blame Democrats, while the approval rating for
lawmakers is appallingly low.
A poll released Wednesday by the Associated Press and GfK shows some 62
percent of more than 1,000 people surveyed said Republicans are to blame
for the government shutdown that began last Tuesday, while about half
of the respondents said the Democrats or U.S. President Barack Obama
bore the greater share of responsibility.
Approval for members of Congress was all the way down to 5 percent.
On Tuesday, as the country faces a deadline to raise the debt ceiling or
default on its debts, President Obama tried to reassure the world that
the United States has always paid its bills.
Obama told journalists on Tuesday that remarks from Congress indicating a
debt default may not damage the world economic recovery make investors
nervous. He called on Congress to hold a clean vote on raising the debt
ceiling -- a vote with no other issues attached.
Obama also appealed to Congress to pass a clean spending bill and reopen the government.
Republican House Speaker John Boehner said he is disappointed the
president is refusing to negotiate on the debt limit or a spending bill.
He said this is not the American system of government.
Boehner said the debt limit has always been fair game for bargaining,
and he said the United States cannot keep spending money it does not
have.
The U.S. Treasury expects to exhaust its remaining borrowing capacity under the current $16.7 trillion limit by October 17.
The U.S. government shut down all but essential services on October 1
when Congress could not pass a funding bill. House Republicans insist on
defunding the president's signature health care initiative. Hundreds of
thousands of government workers are still furloughed and many important
services remain unavailable.

In a story about the monument closure, Fox News host Anna Kooiman fell prey to a false report from a parody site, which claimed that President Obama had offered to keep the International Museum of Muslim Cultures open with cash from his own pocket.
“The Republican National Committee is offering to pay for it to keep it
open so that the veterans from Honor Flight are going to be able to go
and see this because who did it honor? It honored them,” Kooiman said
during a report on Friday. “It really doesn't seem fair, especially —
and we're going to talk a little bit later in the show too about some
things that are continuing to be funded. And President Obama has offered
to pay out of his own pocket for the museum of Muslim culture out of
his own pocket, yet it's the Republican National Committee who's paying
for this.” Kooiman was referencing a quote from the National Report, a parody news site that ran the fake story on Obama. The key quote from the story reads:
“The International Museum of Muslim Cultures is sacred. That is why I
have taken it upon myself to use my own personal funds to re-open this
historic piece of American culture.” On one hand, Media Matters
points out that the National Report removed a disclaimer it once posted
on its site acknowledging that the material contained within was
parody. On the other hand, the National Report currently contains
a set of “news” headlines such as “Jesus Christ boycotts Hobby Lobby,”
and “Police barge into kindergarten classroom and taser multiple
children ‘for the check of it.’” But in the fast world of TV
news, it’s most likely that a producer told Kooiman about the so-called
news report, which then made it on air before anyone could confirm the
report’s details.

Thursday, October 03, 2013

A Republican lawmaker who voted for a budget measure that set up the
government shutdown confronted a park ranger to ask why a particular
portion of the government was shut down.Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) asked the U.S. Park Service Ranger why she was keeping out most tourists from the World War II Memorial, although veterans have been permitted to go inside.“How do you look at them and deny them access?” Neugebauer said, with an American flag tucked into his lapel pocket.The
ranger told Neugebauer, who voted Sunday with most House Republicans to
delay implementation of the Affordable Care Act while funding the
federal government, that it was difficult to keep out tourists.The congressman told the ranger it should be difficult, and he suggested Park Service employees should be ashamed of themselves.“I’m not ashamed,” the ranger said, and a crowd of onlookers joined the confrontation.“This woman is doing her job, just like me,” a bicyclist said. “I’m a 30-year federal veteran, (and) I’m out of work.”Neugebauer blamed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for the
shutdown, but the bicyclist said it was the government’s fault for not
passing a budget.Access to the memorial and other monuments in Washington, D.C., has
become a political flashpoint after the government shut down Tuesday.Two other House Republicans who voted for the budget measure rejected by the Senate, as promised, opened a barricade to the World War II Memorial to a group of veterans who’d arrived Tuesday morning as part of an Honor Flight visit.House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) complained that House
Republicans were trying to fund parts of the government they liked, such
as the memorial, through smaller bills instead of voting on a
comprehensive package that didn’t include a provision on Obamacare.“They took hostages by shutting down the government,” Pelosi said. “Now they’re releasing one hostage at a time.”The conservative Judicial Watch filed
a Freedom of Information Act request related to the order to close the
memorial, and the Republican National Committee chairman offered to cover costs to keep the memorial open.A White House spokesman said Tuesday that the Interior Department
would permit World War II veterans inside the memorial grounds, and an
Honor Flight spokesman said the park service had “bent over backward” to
accommodate them..................

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

On the first full day of the government shutdown, Rush Limbaugh,
the one true leader of the Republican Party, took to his “golden
microphone” to declare that bringing hundreds of federal agencies to a
screeching halt, threatening the economy with the loss of $300 million a
day in lost revenue, and cashiering 800,000 federal employees was not
so bad. Why? Because in Rush’s words, “Barack Obama’s base” will be
having a “fine day” because they’ll still get their “welfare checks.”If you want to understand why we are where we are, that’s all you need to know.Despite
all the pundits, political consultants and even some elected
Republicans, who see the government shutdown as a disaster of epic
proportions for the GOP, House Republicans have no incentive to care. In
fact, they only have to listen to one person: Sen. Ted Cruz, because
Cruz, a kind of Joe McCarthy-meets-Father Coughlin figure, is channeling
a political base Rush and his ilk have been prepping for more than 30
years to be exactly as they are. What are they?
Immune to the results of elections, for one thing, in part because
they simply don’t believe the results they don’t like. In the districts
where the Archie Bunker bulwark of the Republican Party lives, Barack
Obama lost both the 2008 and 2012 elections in a landslide. Nobody they
know voted for him. And the people they bowl and watch college football
and have backyard barbecues with hate the guy, and believe just like
they do that he’s a Kenyan Marxist who stole the White House using a
horde of fraudulent voters who in reality are a bunch of criminal
“illegals.”They also reject the concept of majority rule, living
instead by the rules of the post-Reconstruction South, where
nullification of federal law is just another way of saying “stand and
fight for your values.” And they’re frustrated with a Republican
political class in Washington who they believe has sold out and buckled
to Democrats (and the media) for far too long.Consider that three
polls this week — a CNBC-All America Economic Survey, a USA Today/Pew
Research poll and a Quinnipiac poll — found that just 19, 22 and 23
percent of respondents, respectively, believe Republicans should shut
down the government in order to derail the implementation of the
Affordable Care Act. The latter number is the percentage of the 53
percent of respondents who oppose “Obamacare,” meaning that the House
GOP is operating at the behest of a super-minority.But for the
30-80 hardliners currently in control of the U.S. House of
Representatives, where they’re holding not just the U.S. economy
hostage, but also their own speaker, those numbers are meaningless. At
best, they see them as “skewed” polls designed to trick conservatives
into caving to Obama’s ruse of letting poor and working-class people
purchase health insurance at a federally backed discount, which, of
course, will destroy freedom itself.Rush has spent a radio
lifetime feeding this base of mostly older, Southern or rural Americans,
a steady diet of victimhood. Many of them broadly resent the scope of
societal change that has taken place since the 1960s, when to their way
of thinking, a slew of unearned benefits went to the blacks, the browns,
the “lazy” poor, and overly “liberated” women, all at their expense.Their
radio guru, whose grandiose style and over-the-top pomposity Cruz
mimics, though in a higher vocal register, has given meat-and-potatoes
conservatives a language of defiance. They don’t have to back down in
the face of an elitist media or a national electorate that rejects their
ideas, their preferred presidential candidates, their religious values
and their yearning for a more “traditional” America.They have Fox
News and Rush and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin to tell
them all they need to know about “the news.” And their experts at the
Heritage Foundation — refashioned by GOP primary-boss Jim DeMint from a
think tank into a talk radio meme factory, tell them the shutdown, or
even a breach of the debt ceiling, is no big deal, if you’re a real,
hardworking American and not a welfare queen.They don’t need any
of you. They have their convictions (and their government Medicare, tax
breaks and FHA loans, but who’s counting). And their politicians will
blow the whole damned government to smithereens if they have to, in
order to give them their country back, untainted by Obama and his scheme
to give undeserving inferiors the health benefits the same God who gave
El Rushbo his golden microphone meant for them alone.